chemistry

The American chemist Eric Stroud claims to have found a substance that can scare away the most fearsome predators in the ocean. And the most curious thing is that it does not do it to protect us from their bites, but to protect them from overfishing and thus contribute to their conservation.

The Korean scientists Soo-Jong Um and Ji-Cheon Jeong discovered some time ago that black pepper is able to reduce the levels of fat in the bloodstream. Now, in an article published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, they explain the molecular basis of this "anti-fat" effect, which they attribute to piperine, the substance that gives it its characteristic (and spicy) flavor.

Indeed. Specifically, the so-called cone snails (of the genus Conus) are very dangerous, tropical marine gastropods that dig their teeth like harpoons into their prey and inject them with paralyzing poisons made up of a potent mixture of one hundred to two hundred different neurotoxins.

Japanese chemist Shigeyoshi Osaki of Nara Medical University (Japan) has used silk from the spider Nephila maculata to make violin strings. The Japanese researcher, who is an expert in polymer chemistry and has been working with spider silk for 35 years, had previously suggested that the material could be used for surgical sutures and in bulletproof vests, but his passion for music has led him to put first test how the material would work on a musical instrument.

It is one of the questions that the mission of ESA Planck tries to answer. At an international conference in Bologna, Italy, attended by astronomers from around the world, its leaders have unveiled the first carbon monoxide distribution map that covers the entire sky. Carbon monoxide is an ingredient in cold clouds in the Milky Way and other galaxies. These clouds, mainly made up of hydrogen molecules, constitute the reservoirs from which stars are born.

A study from the University of Reims (France) published in the journal PLoS ONE reveals that the shape of the glass where champagne is served affects the amount of bubbles it contains and, therefore, how we experience its taste. Specifically, the researchers studied the concentration of carbon dioxide (responsible for the formation of bubbles) and ethanol.

Scientists at the University of Bristol (UK) have dissolved iron salts in a liquid to create a new soap that can be controlled by magnets. The discovery could be used to make revolutionary household and industrial cleaning products, as well as to remove oil slicks from the oceans and to treat polluted waters, among other applications.

A strange crystal that could be older than our own planet fell on the Kamchatka Peninsula (Russia) enveloped in a meteorite and, for several years, was part of a collection of minerals stored in a museum. Now, an investigation carried out by scientists at Princeton University has demonstrated the extraterrestrial origin of this finding, which is also the only known sample of a quasicrystal formed under natural conditions.